FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
RALEIGH — A late amendment to House Bill 307 (“Iryna’s Law”) seeks to expand North Carolina’s execution methods to include firing squads and other inhumane practices, intensifying the harms already written into the bill.
HB 307 requires courts to review nearly all 122 death row cases by December 2027 — an arbitrary timeline that risks wrongful executions. Twelve innocent North Carolinians have already been exonerated from death row after spending a combined 165 years there. Under HB 307’s deadlines, some of them might not have lived to prove their innocence.
The amendment opens the door to execution methods that amount to torture:
- Firing squads leave prisoners’ bodies mutilated and have already led to botched executions in South Carolina.
- Electrocutions have set prisoners on fire, caused bleeding from their faces, and filled execution chambers with the smell of burning flesh.
- Nitrogen gas has caused prisoners to thrash violently and heave as they suffocated.
- Even lethal injection, long touted as “humane,” has often been botched, leaving people burned, paralyzed, or crying out in pain.
These methods traumatize not only those executed but also correctional staff and witnesses.
“HB 307 does not move us forward. This bill, with the additional amendment, strips away even the pretense of humanity,” said Noel Nickle, Executive Director of the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. “The bill does nothing to deter crime or address the root causes of violence. It does nothing to increase public safety. Instead, it doubles down on a racially biased, error-prone system that disproportionately punishes people of color and people with serious mental illness.”
North Carolina has carried out 43 executions since the 1970s. HB 307 could open the door to as many as 40 executions in rapid succession, far beyond anything in our state’s history.
NCCADP urges lawmakers to reject HB 307 and invest in approaches that truly promote safety, healing, and justice.
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The NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (NCCADP.org) is a grassroots collective of 23 partner organizations committed to ending the death penalty and creating a new vision of justice in North Carolina. Contact Noel Nickle at noel@nccadp.org or (828) 775-9912.
